Law Library Symposium Leads to Collection of Essays on Legal Treatise

“New Perspectives on the Legal Treatise” — edited by Femi Cadmus, law librarian and professor of law at Yale Law School, and Nicholas Mignanelli, former lecturer in legal research at the Law School and assistant director for reference at the Lillian Goldman Law Library — examines the legal scholarship through the lenses of history, authorship, identity, and technological transitions.  

The book — which came out of the Second Yale Legal Information Symposium, “The Legal Treatise: Past, Present, and Future,” hosted by the Law Library in March 2023 — opens with an essay by Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Legal History John Langbein tracing the decline of legal treatise writing in the American legal academy to the rise of legal realism. Subsequent essays address subjects ranging from the development and impact of the Anglo-American law scholarship to the implications of electronic format and the continuing relevance of the legal treatise in an era of so-called “AI-driven” law.  

Cadmus’ research interests, publications, and presentations focus on law and technology, open access to legal information, the evolving role of the modern-day law library, and law library administration. She is a past president of the American Association of Law Libraries, participates on several legal information advisory boards, and serves on the board of the Yale Law Journal Company and the Yale Law Journal Fund. She holds an LL.B. from the University of Jos, Nigeria, a B.L. from Nigerian Law School, an LL.M. from the University of Warwick, England, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Oklahoma and is admitted to practice in New York.

Mignanelli, who now serves as an associate professor of law and the assistant dean and director of the Mabee Legal Information Center at the University of Tulsa College of Law, is a legal bibliographer whose scholarship uses critical frameworks to examine legal information structures and practices. He is the incoming Editor of Law Library Journal. He holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Arizona College of Information Science and a J.D. from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.